


the place where my ideas go to die

by voksen



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Ficlet Collection, Outtakes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-14
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2017-12-11 19:52:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 10,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/802567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voksen/pseuds/voksen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Mis ficbits and whatnot that probably will never get expanded into worthwhile things because I have no work ethic whatsoever</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Joly grows wings [Joly/Bossuet]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joly literally grows four wings? in an AU where he's a dragonfly! and bossuet is a human and they make it work.

The Metamorphosis jokes had ceased to be funny some days ago, when Joly’s back had split jaggedly down his spine, zigzagged across the knobs ( _oh god, Lesgle!_ he had cried, _help me!_ but there had been nothing Bossuet could do to hold the curling skin shut; it had broken all his awkward stitches as it pulled away from raw muscle and the unnatural, iridescent sheen he had glimpsed beneath) and now they sit - or lie, for Joly has not left bed in a week - in awkward, horrible silence, hoping that Bossuet’s lies about the nature of Joly’s illness will keep the others away until… until.

Joly groans, a choked, gurgling agonized noise, and Bossuet drops the book he had been pretending to read and is at his side in an instant, fearing that it is the end at last; when Joly gasps “The bandages… please…” he hesitates only a moment before pulling out his pocketknife and slicing away the cloth with which he had tried to hold his friend’s body together.

They peel away in a sodden wet mess of slimy, stretching fluids and it is only because this is _Joly,_ it is Joly - he has repeated it to himself over and over until it is a more heartfelt prayer than any canonical one - that Bossuet does not vomit; not even that, however, can restrain his shocked gasp at the sight that lies beneath the layer of ichor that covers him: as he lifts the last of the bandage away, Jolllly’s translucent _ailes_ shudder, crumpled and damp, and rise slowly, delicately into the air, towering above them both like crystal sails.

* * *

The skin on Joly’s back that had sloughed off to free his wings has not regrown; what remains, after Bossuet has carefully sponged away the ichor, is a greenish chitinous sort of armor, pale and opalescent, that shimmers and pulses faintly under the light when he holds the candle near - when he touches it, strokes his shaking finger down Joly’s back where his spine had been, it is hard and hot and impossibly smooth, like glass from a fire; Joly trembles beneath his hand, his face pressed into the pillow, his wings beat the air around them and Bossuet snatches his hand back, remembering the terrible sound Joly had made when Bossuet had pulled the bandages away.

Joly pries himself to his knees and turns, looking into his face for the first time in hours; Bossuet nearly bites through his tongue: Joly’s eyes are shadowed pits - no, not gone, but changed, grown black and large and faceted, like great pieces of cut jet, like something from the depths of Combeferre’s dullest illustration books - when he lifts the candle again, wax trembling out of it and dripping hot and painful on his hand, the light limns each hard line with reflected fire.

His mouth is still perfect, unchanged; when he says “Lesgle — Bossuet —” it is Jolllly’s voice and the pain is gone out of it; his hands, when he reaches for Bossuet’s shoulders, are warm and solid still; his body, as Joly writhes atop him, as they cling together desperately, is still Joly’s body - even if, as he cries out again, there is the drone of insects behind the human voice - even if, when he shudders and throws his head back, the shivering vibrations of his wings threaten to lift him from Bossuet’s arms.


	2. Babylon 5 fusion [Javert/Montparnasse]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Javert/Montparnasse, space AU.

Javert wears black leather gloves - real leather, the hide of some dead thing, the sort that goes thousands of credits to the inch - and he can’t help but watch them every time they meet like this despite the knowing glint it brings to Javert’s cold pale eyes.

He wonders if they’re soft: if Javert’s always-covered hands beneath them are soft like a diplomat’s or calloused like the rest of him; he never asks aloud and Javert never answers in words.

“Be seeing you,” Javert says then as he always does when he’s got everything he came for; Montparnasse’s eyes follow his hand in its salute, and it’s only hours later that he realizes he’s not sure whether or not he had imagined Javert’s harsh laugh.


	3. bread [Enjolras & Grantaire]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> E/R Bread.

Hucheloup was dead, and, judging by the scowl on Enjolras’ face as he picked at the gritty bread left on his plate, the secret of carpes ho gras had gone with him, though the writing on the wall outside had not. Or perhaps it was purely the sheaf of paper beside him souring his mood: he had been scratching at it all evening, striking out, editing and re-editing as if he could not, for once, find the words to stir a people to life and death for Patria; as if Horace too had abandoned the Corinth.

Grantaire opened his mouth to comment, made note of a sudden scowl more like a thunderstorm than a statue’s stern grimace, and stopped his lips with the neck of his winebottle instead; there would be time enough later to tempt the lion’s mood.


	4. western AU [Marius/Valjean's handkerchief]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> marius/kerchief western au

Beneath the clinging plainsdust, the bandanna is infused with a sweeter perfume than Marius has ever smelled, even back East; it’s like - it’s like roses and fresh hay and the sea, all rolled into something better, something more beautiful than he’d imagined could exist on this earth, the scent of his Ursula’s hair.

He twists the red calico through his fingers, bends his head to it to smell it closer, to press his lips to the fine-woven cotton; he imagines her without it, riding beside her white-haired father, her own hair uncovered and unbound, flying back in the wind, and a shiver of ecstasy takes him.

He has to find her.


	5. heist movie AU [Eponine/Cosette]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eponine/Cosette, heist movie.

“It’s Javert,” Eponine hisses under her breath - it’s not like he’s lurking around the corner, he’s gone for at least another minute or two, chasing after ‘Parnasse and the others - but it still feels like he might be.

Cosette’s hand is warm at her wrist, her breath hot in Eponine’s ear as she murmurs back just as quietly: “Hold still.”

When the lock pops loose, Eponine catches it before it can swing back and clatter noisily against the railing Javert had cuffed her to. But Cosette’s clever fingers don’t fall away so quickly, and though the rest of the plan has gone straight to hell, the Lark finds time to steal a kiss before they’re on the run again.


	6. manhandling [Valjean/Montparnasse]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Valjean/Montparnasse, Valjean manhandling Parnasse with his super-strength. :D

“God—!” Montparnasse said, the word leaping free of him against his will like blood from a wound - he could no more stop it on his lips than he could have stopped his eyes from looking. The old man’s impossibly broad back was ridged and creased like ruined leather, more scar than skin; it seemed incredible to him that any man, even this one, could have survived the cause of it.

Valjean straightened, saw him in the doorway; dropped his nightshirt to the bed and crossed, naked and apparently unashamed (did they have nightclothes in prison? Montparnasse wondered suddenly, his mind alight with the scattered useless thought the old man always startled him into) to face him - shoved him, before Montarnasse could step out of the way, fully up against the wall just inside the room; his gaze intense, their faces - their bodies - no more than an inch apart.

“Look!” he said, “look if you want to - if you must see the truth of it to believe in what I am telling you; if you cannot imagine the lash without seeing the mark—” he left one hand on Montparnasse’s chest, pinning him to the wall; seized his right hand with the other and wrapped it about himself, pressing it to the thick-webbed scars; Montparnasse’s fingers splayed across a dozen at once, against the thick powerful muscle beneath, “— then look at me; see a thief, see the brand of prison, the brand of dishonest work; the rack of the law — see that I do not want this for you, boy — that this does not have to be your story, that you still have time left to take another road even if you think you do not—” But Montarnasse was no longer listening; between the hand at his throat, the growl of the old man’s fervent voice, the promise of power beneath his fingertips, his thoughts were spinning beyond comprehension. At last his control, too, broke; he lunged forward and caught the old man mid-word, biting at his mouth in an almost-kiss that had his lips, when he finally thrust Montparnasse back into the wall again, as cherry-red as Montparnasse’s own - and his eyes as wild.


	7. failed attempts at corpsing [Jehan/Grantaire]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jehan is a romantic poet right? so they were pretty obsessed with death. so jehan has R pretend to be dead during sex or vice versa with option lying around naked in the snow outside to achieve proper temperature

Grantaire is not beautiful, traditionally speaking, but laid out naked and cold on the low table there is a certain transcendence to him, an echo of the splendor of death in the pale blue tracery on his wrist, in the sallow pallor of his face, his half-shut rolled-back eyes - until he begins to talk: “And when convulsive throes denied my breath, the faintest utterance to my fading thought,” he declaims with a breathy pompous pretension that both skewers the unfortunate reader at a salon they had attended the week before with remarkable precision and utterly ruins the mood.

“Thus much and more, and yet thou lov’st me not,” Jehan says, poking him rudely in the stomach until Grantaire gives up playing dead and laughs, batting at his fingers with frigid hands and accidentally - or perhaps not, one can never tell with Grantaire - knocking them lower, where Jehan finds that despite the effects of half a bottle of brandy, ten minutes of lying in the snow, and nearly a full minute of aping death, there is still life in him yet.

With a shiver and a low sigh, Grantaire shifts to his side so that Jehan has room to join him atop the table, which creaks alarmingly beneath their combined weight but stays upright; he presses his cold back against Jehan’s chest and his hips forward into his hand and says, quite refusing to finish anything he begins, “But love is for fools and poets, after all.”


	8. Duchamp at Staub's [OC]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Monsieur Duchamp walks in on a certain dressing room and is completely traumatized. (Uses characters/scenes from [Cuir Cui Bono](https://archiveofourown.org/works/821751) by Sath and [A Wolf in New Clothing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/829460).

It had been a productive expedition, M. Duchamp thought with all the bloodthirsty pleasure of a hunter on safari; his arms were loaded down with fine silk of the newest mode; a moment’s time alone in the dressing-room and he would have the cut and pattern memorized and ready for recreation - no, _reinvention!_ \- for his fit would be better and his customers better dressed for all the provincial jokes he had heard since arriving; his stitches more delicate, the style suited man for man instead of sold without a thought.

But he had been waiting ten minutes at least; his arms were beginning to tire, and still the thumping chaos from within continued; when at last he saw the tailor’s assistant walk past behind him he lost all patience in a huff and thrust the door open to demand that its rude inhabitants vacate at once.

He was at once assaulted not by great lumbering apes as he had half-imagined from the sounds, but by the near-blinding sight of a man - a boy - someone clearly old enough to know better - folded nearly into a knot over a couch, a pair of leather breeches clinging to his thighs and another man clinging obscenely to his buttocks, open trouser-fall flopping wildly about as they struggled not to tip off the couch entirely; he could do nothing for a moment but gape in horror - and then he slammed the door shut in indignant rage and, leaving the things - the rags - on a table, stormed out: no shop and no tailor who would try to sell a pair of breeches so clearly too small as to be only usable for obscene purposes - and then to provide a space for that use in the store - could possibly have fashion worthy of the artistry of his needle.


	9. Avatar: the Last Airbender AU [Valjean & Cosette]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> valjean a:tla au? your decision what he does! with sky bison cosette?

Guilt is hot as fire in the pit of Jang’s stomach; no matter how often, how fervently he thinks _I didn’t mean to_ there comes always afterwards the unyielding, echoing voice of the judge: _and does that mean you did not do it?_ to which he must answer now, as he had answered before: no, he is guilty; he had stolen a bushel of rice, and now he has killed, and the reasons make no difference, for logic and reason cannot bend window-glass back into form any more than they can raise the dead.

He kneels down beside the small lump in the pile of straw, swallows back the choked stone in his throat - if there will be no punishment for what he has done, there will at least be a duty, a payment - and says “Wake up, little one; your mama cannot come to you anymore, but I swore to her I would care for you—” and here he stops, biting his lip, for what kind of keeper he will be he has no idea; his hands are broad and scarred and too strong, they are clumsy and indelicate, they are an earthbender’s hands, they are as ill-suited for holding a fragile, airy little life as his stone heart is to raising one.

But then the straw stirs; the little bison pokes her head free, and as their gazes meet he feels something in him crack and shatter; his voice as he says, “Ah, Little Thing—” is as broken as the scarred fault that had snapped and fallen away to powdered dust; he gathers her into his arms - they are strong arms, and he will be able to carry her for many more weeks, until she can walk on her own, and then he will guard her until she can fly - and strokes her forehead where the arrow is beginning to show against the pale sand of her fur; as he does, she taps him lightly on the hand with a hoof and blinks her large soft eyes, and all at once he is as in love with her as he is with the solid ground beneath his feet.


	10. autoerotic asphyxiation [Grantaire/Enjolras]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> grantaire self-hating autoerotic asphyxia

It starts, strangely enough, with a chance comment from Jean Prouvaire, who has lately been infatuated with lost Aeschylus; Enjolras had been speaking at length quite seriously - too seriously - of the work ahead, and as they leave arm in arm, having between them gotten the better of several bottles, Prouvaire says: “To hear all that, the immortal Republic will take more labor than the immortal Herakles,” and, after nearly knocking Grantaire over with an unlucky stumble as they reach his doorstep, wanders off mumbling something about well-beloved Enjolras _Kallinikos._

The image refuses to leave him; between the oysters, the brandy, and the bizarre thought of Enjolras, chosen of the gods, Grantaire is up all night, until somewhere in the early morning hours he remembers the way Enjolras’s hair, in need of a trim, had once shone like a lion’s ruff as he tossed it back impatiently - and just like that Enjolras is Herakles and the lion at once, wrestling with himself through Grantaire’s mind, his loincloth raked by shining claws, his golden throat caught in an implacable hold.

Grantaire’s own breath stops at the image; he sets his hand to his own throat and squeezes, tentatively, stopping his air, imagining himself as a maneless beast, the pest of Nemea; imagining Enjolras atop him, power and conviction bearing him down into the dust of some forgotten cave - it is good, it is too good, he grips himself harder until his fingers dig deep and bruise, until splotches of gold and white dance before his eyes, until his other hand finds his prick and rubs desperately - but it is not until he sees Enjolras the victor, with the lion’s skin flung across his beautiful back, that he finds release.


	11. guro [Montparnasse]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> something creepy

A few nights after the barricades, when the blood has finally been scrubbed from the streets but ‘Parnasse hasn’t seen Eponine or Gavroche or Claquesous in days, he stumbles home, mostly drunk and partly drugged, and only by rote remembers to divest himself of jacket, hat, and waistcoat before falling into bed.

He dreams of Paris devouring its streets, of the barricades he’d gone to stare at rising like sharp wooden fangs from a dirty mouth; he dreams of bodies impaled on black pikes through hands and chests and skulls, as ugly in death as they had been wild and handsome in life, mutilated and torn with splinters and lead into formless, soulless meat, and he wakes late in the morning with his stomach roiling and his cock hard in his trousers.

His mind, when he has taken care of the one and turned his attention to the other, is not easily distracted; he strokes his prick, pinching tight at the base as Claquesous had used to do, to hold him back from the edge, and thinks of him with blood dripping through the eyeholes of his mask, dead and stripped to the bone, a flayed and broken jester. He tries Eponine instead; a gentler touch, lighter fingers, the memory of a smirk in his ear, the way she had loved to tease - his cock is wet in his fist and it feels like the slickness of blood, of a cut throat and a wide slash-mouthed grin.

He knows death; has felt half a dozen men die under his fingers, as close as can be, taken their last breaths, held their hair carefully back in a parody of tenderness so their blood spilled into the sewer instead of onto their waistcoats, and yet here it is more intimate. Here it has finally touched him and he finds it sweet beyond words, as tempting as a fine fur cloak. His own hand seems bony, skeletal; he imagines a hole in it like he’d imagined for Eponine, and something familiar strikes him about the image, something ancient, something half-remembered and gone in an instant with the next shudder of his breath. He is close - he has been close for an hour, and it is not enough. He adds more slashes in his mind: across his throat, his own familiar killing stroke, laying flesh open and silencing in one blow; through his face, destroying him as that queer old man had warned -

It is almost enough, it is not quite enough, he is arched, panting, gasping, ruining his bedsheets with sweat and fists. _It is not enough,_ the memories are too much with him, he is too whole; he thinks of the mess of gore strewn over the barricades and casts himself into those jaws, grinding himself away until his beauty is entirely eaten up in blood and bitten, shredded flesh, until pavement shatters and houses burn and nothing remains of Montparnasse.

He comes, gasping, the black pleasure blooming before his eyes deeper and more consuming than it has ever been.


	12. time slip Dr. Joly [Joly & Bossuet]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a few sentences of time slip dr. joly, of course

It was Lesgle ("But they all call me Bossuet, so you might as well—") who finally convinced him that it was real, that somehow he really was in the middle of the _nineteenth century,_ and not simply lying half-dead and hallucinating in a ditch somewhere. He still doubted it, sometimes, especially late at night, lying half-asleep on Lesgle’s friend’s spare mattress, staring up at the ceiling, the unprocessed wool blankets itching at his skin and building him up to a fine case of psoriasis. But around Lesgle there was no room for that; he filled Joly’s fears with laughter and the awkwardness inherent in adjusting to new times, new clothes and new everything all at once with pratfalls and accidents that were only half-faked. 

When he came back that evening, though, to find Joly sitting at the table, reading over an ancient book bound the year before as the very newest in modern medicine, he seemed - out of sorts, mired in a strange mixture of excitement and solemnity.

Joly wasn’t sure where he went, though by the grinning secrecy of it he suspected politicians or prostitutes, and had decided himself not quite up to inviting himself along on a journey of either sort just yet, no matter how much of a feel for this strange new world he’d gotten. In any case, Lesgle had decidedly become his friend, and as such he waited until he had taken off his hat and run a settling hand through his thinning hair before asking: “Any news?"

"Ah, news," Lesgle said. “My friend, for you I have only old news, for my _ailes_ are not so swift as yours — Lamarque is ill. Did you know? A surfeit of ardent spirit in the only governmental man in Paris with any at all; a yellow humour as great as the red, that is to say, cholera."


	13. afterlife [Javert & Gymont??]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remember the one you wrote where Javert got to know, and fell in love with someone in the afterlife?

It seems to him that he has been riding a long time, though he cannot remember the beginning: everything _before_ seems shrouded in cold, impenetrable mist that chokes him with damp fingers when he tries to think beyond the _now_ of himself, Javert, and the unsaddled back of the horse beneath him.

To the sides there is only shadow, walls of consuming blackness that pull at his eyes with a strange and physical temptation, but even when he leans slightly to one side or another the horse does not obey his unspoken request and continues on with silent hooves towards the faint glow that lies far off in the distance ahead. Javert rests his hands on the horse’s withers, feeling strands of mane beneath his gloved fingertips; suddenly, impulsively, he strips the gloves off and throws them aside, where they vanish utterly into the gloom.

The horse’s hide is hot beneath his touch, its neck slightly damp as if the ride has been every bit as long as Javert remembers, its mane thick and smooth and long, twining about his fingers with a solid physicality. It is familiar. It touches a cold place inside his heart with something akin to warmth, like a single candle in a darkened hall or one star shining through the clouds on a moonless night, and Javert bends down, running his bare hands down over strong, working shoulders as the horse continues to bear him unceasingly out of the mist, and he says, without knowing why he he speaks: “Thank you." 

His own voice is muffled by the press of shadow, but he hears Gymont’s habitual answering snort as clearly as he ever had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what the hell is this


	14. waxplay [Javert/Valjean]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> JVJ, waxplay. :>

The sun sets early in Montreuil in the winter, and so Javert reports each week as it grows darker and colder, until even Madeleine, thrifty to the point of martyrdom, begins to keep a small fire in his hearth and a row of candles in cheap brass sticks on his desk. To Javert this is only worth a moment’s attention until, one day, as he approaches to pass Madeleine his ledger, his boot catches on an upturned nail and he stumbles heavily. He falls against the desk and tips a candle over, sending a spray of hot molten wax over Madeleine’s hands; he opens his mouth to apologize for his clumsiness, but the words are snuffed as quickly as the candle when he glances up and sees Madeleine’s face: his mouth half-open, tongue at his lower lip, his eyes dark and hot as he stares down at the white wax hardening on his skin. Javert feels a flash of undeniable heat through himself as well, an impossible, insubordinate echoing; he finds himself wanting to peel the wax gently from Madeleine’s hands, to relight the candle and wait, watching him, for it to refill its cup, then to lift it slowly, intentionally, and let it fall in hot sharp white splashes up Madeleine’s strong arm, across his chest and down his belly, where when it hardened it would — Javert, his cheeks hot with more than embarrassment, sets the candlestick to rights; with a muttered apology and an inward curse, relights the candle and jams it hastily back where it belongs.

He learns quickly, after the night of the barricades and the river — and how odd it is that he has the chance to learn this, he will never forget completely, but is gradually learning to press into the back of his mind where he must not always dwell on it — that Valjean is as given to denial and abnegation as Madeleine had been, that it had not been, is not an act, but an innate part of Valjean, a lack of inward sight chained to his character with iron shackles: that Valjean looking at himself perceives only tarnish and cold soot where Javert now sees — where the world has long seen — the truth of him, in flame and silver, mercy and forgiveness hot enough to burn.

Javert does not wait for chance again, once the winter presents him again with opportunity, though this time it is in the form of a pair of fine silver candlesticks instead of plain brass. He takes one up and brings it to Valjean himself, and in asking him about their provenance - which he knows, and suspects Valjean knows he knows - tips it just enough to spill a droplet across onto Valjean’s wrist, in a way that could be mistaken for accident were it not for the look that sparks hot between them as their eyes meet; were it not for the shiver of Valjean’s breath loud in the silent room; the way, when Javert sets the candlestick down and turns his hands quickly to Valjean’s buttons, he helps him, letting his clothes fall carelessly to the floor; the way, when Javert sweeps the top of the desk clean, Valjean sits atop it without a word for the safety of his books and papers; and, at last, the perfect sweet sobs, caught as the pair of them have been caught halfway between pain and pleasure, when Javert frees the candle from its stick and finally splashes brilliant white droplets across his chest, over his nipples, downwards, just as Javert had imagined those long years ago. 

But when Javert fumbles Valjean’s trousers open one-handed, baring his thick straining cock, its tip beaded white with come instead of wax, he hesitates, candle still in hand, unsure for the first time whether this is permitted, whether it is too much; his eyes seek out Valjean’s and find that same dark and desperate gaze, his lips wet and parted, and Valjean says, “Please."


	15. spermpires [Javert/Valjean]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> spermpire javirt

By the time he gets Javert into the alley he can feel it, the piercing need that is not his own, that seeps like poison through the skin of his knuckles where they brush against Javert’s chest beneath the martingale and bites, bone-deep, into his flesh, a raging fire fueled by the scents of dozens of young men. It is not precisely a familiar sensation, for he has felt this only once before, ten years ago, when he had a different name and Javert a different place — but it is an unforgettable one; it is seared into his mind along with the mumbled explanation he had prised from Javert that night and what small mercy he had provided in return: the haggard wild cast of Javert’s eyes, the tense desperate lash of his body, the wet press of his tongue over Madeleine’s prick and the tight grip of his fist.

Valjean fumbles for his knife, slashing at the thick ropes that bind Javert hand and throat. The minute he is no longer held up, half strangled, Javert drops immediately, instinctively to his knees, and this tells Valjean what he already knew. He asks it anyway, softly, urgently, lest someone overhear: “How long has it been since you drank, Javert — those boys did not let you — can you wait an hour longer — can you get away?"

"Let me die here," Javert breathes, "Valjean," — he makes of Valjean’s name a curse, a blasphemy harsher and more bitter than Valjean has heard in years — “You brought me here to kill me, so let me die." 

But there is a plea in his eyes, a flicker of life, and he sets his gloved hand on Valjean’s shin, sliding it slowly upwards, and when Valjean says, “Javert— take what you need from me, I do not blame you, I do not want your death, even—" Javert does not wait for him to finish, but unbuttons his trousers with shaking fingers and without hesitation swallows him deep, his eyes shuddering closed in ecstasy and renewal as Valjean’s cock hardens quickly in his throat.


	16. post-seine candles [Javert & Valjean]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> candles

It is a strange vigil he keeps, Valjean thinks as he sits by his own bedside. The room is dim; he has not yet risen to draw the curtains nor light the candles, though the sun had set some hours past. The night is cloudy and the faint moonlight that filters in is barely enough to see by. It reduces the apartment to a world of large shadows and pale streaks.

Valjean does not need much light to trace the features of the man in his bed. The doctor - for he has engaged the same one to look after both sick men - is as close-mouthed and grim about Javert's pneumonia-clogged lungs as he is about Pontmercy's raging fevers and Valjean worries about them both. He worries also for Cosette. He tries not to worry for himself; truthfully he has very little time left for that.

In this night Inspector Javert is gray-faced, his features blank and lax with drugged dreaming. If he does not look soft, neither is he the wolf Valjean has feared for so many years. Still, Valjean reminds himself strictly, he is not (was never, truthfully) Madeleine's tamed dog of years ago.

He must remember that. Standing, Valjean crosses to the mantel and lights the row of candles there. He lifts down one of the candlesticks and returns to the bed, setting it on the side table. Javert's eyelids are weighed down by the opium the doctor had provided against the pain; he does not wake. Valjean is thankful for that.

The candlelight chases the shadows away but Javert is still too gray for his liking. He cannot forget the sight of him poised on the Pont-au-Change, bareheaded under the cloudy sky. The rest of the night is a blur of sewage and blood, of death after death and Marius's heavy body and his own heavy duty.

But Valjean has never forgotten Javert, just as Javert has never failed in the hunt - 

If he does not wake up, as the doctor occasionally implies without ever quite saying, he may never know what drove Javert from his doorstep to that bridge. In some way it might be a relief; Valjean is growing too old and too tired to run - Cosette is growing too old to drag along - and Javert may well be the last lawful man in France who remembers the jack of Toulon.

Valjean takes up the candlestick again, holding the heavy silver in his palms. Light and shadow flicker, chasing each other across Javert's face. He cannot bring himself to hope that Javert dies any more than he could have stood on the bank of the Seine and left him to the river's mercy. He is no Bishop, he, but after all these years there is that much of good in him, at least.

Wax pools slowly in the top of the candle; as he turns the candlestick between his fingers, lost in memories of the past, of dead men, it breaks its confines and drips free, rolling down the smooth side of the candle and then over the silver itself until it meets his fingertip. There is just enough heat left in the droplet to startle him out of nostalgia.

He cleans the wax off the silver gently and sets the broken bits atop the table. "This was the price of Valjean's soul," he tells Javert's sleeping form. He wonders if Javert knows; if the police in Digne had reported their actions on that long-ago night, if Javert had ever guessed at the truth. It is another thing he may never know.

When the wax threatens to spill again he sets the candle back on the sidetable and rests his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands together for lack of anything else to do with them. It feels like praying; it feels as if he should be praying. He is not sure of the words.

He hopes the cost of Javert's soul is something he is able to pay.

* * *


	17. cut scene from 'wear no disguise for me'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the ending of _[wear no disguise for me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/675352) _ that my beta said didn't work

_"You-" Eponine begins, then slants a wary look at Javert and addresses him instead: "Will we see him again?"_

_The unicorn curvettes slightly, prancing as if to show off and catch their eyes, and then, stretching out in that bounding unhorselike gait again, dashes off to the north. Towards Montreuil._

_Javert turns his eyes back to the road. "Yes," he says. "I think we will see him again."_

* * *

 

They reach the prefecture headquarters at about midmorning. Cosette had fallen asleep not long after Jean had left them, and throughout the long drive Eponine had been mostly silen. Even the Thenardiers grew quiet - or quieter - after a few hours, though after Javert reins the horse to a stop they begin their muffled shrieking again.

But now that they are here, he can hand them off to the proper hands - he manages to reclaim his net as they are shackled correctly by the obviously curious men who have come out to assist one of Javert's fellow Inspectors. He helps Eponine off the cart, giving the reins to someone - he's not entirely sure who, nor does he care - and then waking Cosette and the boy to bring them inside.

The three children walk together as he escorts them, Eponine and her brother hand in hand, Cosette beside them - and just as they pass through the door, Javert is struck by the idea that they are walking in front of him as the girls had seemed to naturally come together in front of Jean: as if they think he, Javert, will protect them - or as if they want to be there.

It is... not altogether an unpleasant thought.

The Chief Inspector of Paris is a busy man; coordinating the fae and human divisions is a thankless and enormous task even without this sort of mixup, but they have his time anyway. Javert gives his report quickly and efficiently: a rather expurgated version of the past day's events, to be honest, but complete in every detail when it comes to the evidence of the Thenardiers' guilt.

When he is done, the man turns to Eponine. "This is true and you will swear to it in court," he says in an uninterested drone, clearly willing to take Javert's word for it - whether because of Javert's reputation for unstinting, correct work, or because of the depth of the other evidence makes her testimony unnecessary in his opinion, Javert doesn't know. It is not his department.

Eponine nods. Javert touches her shoulder briefly and she startles slightly, but comes up with a bobbed curtsey and a "Yes, m'sieur," quickly enough.

"One more thing, Inspector Javert," M. Gisquet says, and the world comes crashing down: "I have enough on the subject of the murder; do you have anything to report on your original assignment?"

And so Javert stands, poised on the parapet between _law_ and _justice_ for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. Jean is innocent and yet wanted; fae and yet far more human than the scum he's just dragged in. This time there can be no more postponement. A man cannot have two masters; so it seems the time has come to make his choice at last. Yet how can he forsake either?

He shocks awake as Cosette's tiny, work-worn hand slips into his own and squeezes gently. Somehow only a moment has gone by as he hung poised in darkness: M. Gisquet is still waiting for his reply, eyes down on the paperwork he is filling out, his bland officious features not yet fallen into impatience or suspicion.

Javert finds his voice at last. "There was no unicorn," he says, and finds that the lie flows like water, unstoppable, carrying him with it. "Only one child lying to make another jealous. Case 24601 can be closed."

"Yes, good," he says, marking something off on his sheet. 

Can it really be so easy? Javert thinks. A single stroke of the pen?

"About the children," he continues, "We may need the daughter's evidence when this comes to trial, so she will have to be kept somewhere safe and out of the way..."

"I'll take them," says Javert, without really thinking about it, and M. Gisquet finally looks up at him, face puzzled.

So, of course, he has to justify it. "This one's," he holds up Cosette's hand slightly, "mother lives in Montreuil; when I go to speak with her about what should be done for the girl, I can take the others with me and keep them safe until the trial."

M. Gisquet looks from him down to the three children; under his gaze, Eponine backs up until she runs into Javert's legs, dragging her brother with her, and Cosette grips his hand ever tighter.

"Hm," he says. "Fine."

 

The next day sees Inspector Javert once more in a coach headed to Montreuil, though it seems everything else is different. How many things can change in the space of hours, he thinks, staring across the coach at Eponine and Cosette sitting side by side; no more rags for the latter, no more finery for the former. They are not actually speaking to each other, and he doubts they will ever be best of friends, but they are both alive and well quit of their past. The boy - Gavroche - is staring out the window, having at last tired of asking Javert ceaseless questions about what everything he carries is and why he has it.

When they arrive, there are dolls to be remembered and retrieved, what seems like four times more baggage to be carried, and countless other small headaches. Finally, Javert gets everything under control and goes to pay the coachman, who says, quite out of nowhere, "A fine family you have there, Inspector."

"Yes," Javert says, and closes his eyes as Gavroche begins to yell again.

 

He installs them in an inn which is nicer than the Thenardier's (but not by much) and instructs both girls to first keep an eye on Gavroche and second not on any account to leave the room. Thus freed, he sets out towards the slums by the docks again.

They are not any more palatable in the light of day than they had been in the night; there are fewer drunkards lying about, it is true, but only because they are either on the ships still or already in the taverns beginning to work their way up to passing out. There are fewer whores, as well; most of them are probably sleeping. There is just as much filth as he remembers.

Javert reaches the address Fantine had supplied without incident, knocks and is admitted on the strength of his uniform; no doubt he is far from the first Inspector to come hunting through here, though his business is definitely not the sort they must assume.

When he knocks, she opens the door quickly. Now that he has seen the daughter, somehow it is easier to see the ghost of something else in the mother, some past life, some history she had not quite managed to escape that now lies buried beneath short-cropped hair and missing teeth.

"Cosette - did you find her?" Fantine says.

How much to say, and when? "Yes," Javert says. "I arrested the Thenardiers, but she is safe--"

"Oh thank God!" she cries with a relief so immediate and overwhelming that Javert closes his mouth and does not say what is on his mind about the situation in which he had found the girl. Instead he stands and waits, watching her as she struggles with emotion. 

"Where is she?" Fantine asks finally. "If I could - if I could see her just once..."

"Here," Javert answers, and then immediately clarifies: "At the inn."

She nods, jerkily, and he steps aside and holds the door for her, then leads her back out into the town, ignoring the odd looks they draw.

It is a strange reunion: Cosette does not really remember her mother, he sees at once, it has been far too long, she had been far too young - but it is also clear that she has long been hungry for _a_ mother and that Fantine is desperate to be one; there is an odd fire burning in her now, a strength that had been hidden. As for the others: Gavroche is too young to understand quite what is going on, and Eponine - Javert is not sure he understands what she feels, but he thinks Fantine will probably work it out.

And so he leaves her to watch the children, brushing off the concern of the innkeeper as he goes out. It is true she is - had been - a whore, but hadn't the Madeleine been fallen once? Perhaps it is blasphemy to compare a unicorn to Christ even obliquely, or to think that any fae might be the saving of a soul or the making of a man. But Javert has somehow become somewhat accustomed to uncertainty and to change, inured to the unthinkable and the impossible.

 

The road to the apple orchard is empty and quiet; when he tops the last gentle rise and it comes into view, the unseasonal blooms are still heavy on the trees.

He hopes Jean will be there.


	18. Javert's mom defends Fantine [OC, Javert]

"We'll have none of that!" Javert snapped, his tone as icy as the chill curling about his gut. "Reynard, take the whore."

At his order the gendarme moved quickly; when the old hag went for him again, Javert caught her at the shoulder, his hand tight as the shackles she'd soon wear again. "Assault is a crime," he said, "and assault under parole - oh yes, I know it. Do you protest, do you deny it? Then let me see your papers!"

Finally she stopped shouting, twisting about in his hold as if to stare up at him. He held her fast, knocking the stick from her hand and kicking it away out of reach, then cuffing her wrists behind her.

He had just made a sign to Reynard to bring the whore and the wounded gentleman when the fog shifted and there, no doubt drawn by the shouts and disturbance, stood Monsieur Madeleine. Javert's breath hissed between his teeth: he knew he was not the same, knew that he had elevated himself from the scum and filth of his birth; he was proud of it as he was proud of nothing else. But to be seen by the Mayor-- the Mayor, who might not understand, who might think - as many men did - that blood would always out --

But M. Madeleine said only: "Inspector - I saw what happened here. Release her, if you would."

"What?" said Javert blankly. His head felt suddenly as full of fog as the street.

"The young woman," M. Madeleine said, gesturing at the whore in Reynard's grip. "She was provoked; she only defended herself. I insist that she be set at liberty."

Javert barely heard the whore's whimpered "Can it be?" - he barely felt the pain when the hag stomped furiously on his boot. Madeleine's attention consumed him utterly.

"But Monsieur le Maire," he said. "She has struck a gentleman - her madam has assaulted the police in the course of duty--"

"Release her, please," Madeleine repeated. "The gentleman struck her first. Look at her, Inspector - she is clearly ill!"

Bamatabois, he noticed, was no longer anywhere to be seen - although he felt a thousand other eyes on him, watching his orders countermanded, his arrest broken. "Monsieur," he said again, and was this time interrupted by the renewed struggles of the old woman he held; she cursed him soundly, cursed the police, the world, the Mayor --

"Enough," he snarled. "Reynard - the Mayor gave an order. Release her."

He heard her released; saw the swirl of M. Madeleine's greatcoat as he rushed to catch her. He did not stay to watch her carried to the hospital but proceeded directly to the prison, the woman who bore him in his grasp and the men who obeyed him trailing behind; one arrest, at least, remained to him. One further arrest by which he would again show righteousness to the world, even if it did not understand the weight of the crime nor the implacability, the incorruptibility, the purity of the law.

He would think of the implications of Monsieur le Maire's intervention later, after justice had been served.

 

* * *


	19. facepugs [Javert]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HELP ME FACEPUGS HELP

It was unnatural; it was unbelievable; it was impossible - and yet the undeniable, physical evidence sprawled there before him on the carpeted floor of M. Gisquet’s office, trying with very little success to pick the pit from an old walnut that had rolled out of Javert’s coat as he had leapt from his chair, his hat tumbling from his head not by force of his movement, but by the rapid and inexplicable expansion of his squirrels into two small, fat dogs.

Mercy — he believed it was Mercy; the small white spot on his shoulder had remained through the transformation, which made as little sense as anything else — finally spit out the entirely unscathed walnut and looked up at him with unusually doleful eyes, while from beneath M. Gisquet’s desk a truly horrible noise announced Justice’s usual unfortunate reaction to abrupt change of any sort, transfigured from angry chattering to sobbing wheezes by whatever had, had _affected_ his squirrels; he looked down at Mercy helplessly, shaken and cast entirely out of his depth by the abrupt betrayal of natural law.

Footsteps in the hallway beyond the door snapped him from his bewilderment; he snatched up the pug before him and had lunged beneath the desk to retrieve Justice, who reacted with a shrieking, piercing yelp and attempted to bite him for his troubles — but when he straightened, the pugs squirming, angry lumps beneath his greatcoat, he found that he had been too slow: M. Gisquet had opened the door while he had been wrestling with Justice and was staring at him with an irritatingly smug smirk, his eyes traveling first from Javert’s hairless cheeks down to his hat, abandoned on the floor, then back to Javert’s paling face, whereupon he said with unseemly relish, “I look forward to the explanation for this, Inspector.”


	20. house hippos [Valjean & Cosette]

"Be very quiet, now," Papa said, taking her hand and helping her across a cracked and crumbling chunk of stone — it reminded Cosette of something, something just out of reach, that tickled in her mind like an answer she ought to have known. It was a frustration she had long grown used to, along with all the rest of the girls, so she simply nodded, squeezing his hand, and trotted a few paces faster to catch up with his longer legs.

He pulled her to a stop a few paces later; the walls of the old convent had fallen just so, and a few saplings had sprouted around them so that it looked more like a fairy cave than a dusty old ruin, though that was a bit of fancy Cosette knew better than to voice. “Here,” Papa mouthed, and leaned in, lifting the concealing branches aside and beckoning her forwards. Cosette leaned in, eyes wide — she half _did_ expect a gnome’s house hidden inside; that was surely not beyond her Papa’s ability to produce — but instead saw a perfect little nest, cleverly formed of dandelion fluff and clover, and within it a creature like nothing she’d ever seen, no bigger than her hand, plump and stubby like Marceline’s badly stuffed rabbit. It rolled over sleepily, revealing two tiny pups nestled beside it; they squeaked gently, and at that Cosette couldn’t hold back a delighted gasp.

The mother creature leapt instantly to its feet, making a small yet ferocious noise and putting itself between them and its babies, and Papa quickly lowered the branch back to cover the mouth of its den. Cosette was too caught up in enchantment to mind; she grabbed eagerly for his hand. “Papa,” she said, “oh, Papa, what are they? I’ve never seen them before!”

"No, I suppose not," said Papa, smiling at her as he often did, though his eyes looked far away. "House hippos come from the new world; how this little family made its home here, I couldn’t say."

Cosette slipped her arm through his, leaning on it; she had used to swing from his arms as a child, she remembered, but that had been ages ago, and she was grown up, now. “House hippos,” she repeated slowly. It had a silly sound that quite suited them. “What do they eat, papa? How do they live outside? If they’re _house_ hippos, why don’t they live in a house? You could bring them inside with you and Uncle when they grew up a little more, and keep them there so that I could see them every day when I come to visit. Couldn’t you?”

"Well," said Papa, and then glanced down at her briefly and smiled again, seeming to shake off his thoughtfulness. "Yes," he said, "yes, I suppose we could try."


	21. toil until the old colors fade AU/outtake [Javert/OC]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Toil](https://archiveofourown.org/works/743490)-AU: Dubois/Javert and an alternative to paperwork /sincerely, least anon to ever anon

Some things were nearly always the same, some reactions could be counted on between the years: approached without the girl, Valjean would run; Martel, in the end, would always get into some mischief or another; Dubois, given a bit of guidance, would generally make something halfway useful of himself — though there had still been the incident with the donkey in Paris and the apple-seller’s stand in Montreuil that Javert still preferred not to think of — and so when he happened to overhear Dubois cooing over him to a group of younger officers like a flock of overexcited pigeons, Javert was pleased beneath his mild annoyance: everything was proceeding as it ought, and the spectre of that carriage-ride in chains would stay buried beneath the river where it belonged.

Dubois presented himself the next evening as Javert was sorting out papers, his hat in his hands, his expression caught somewhere between embarrassment and horrified nervousness, and cleared his throat in the doorway. “Ah,” he said, “Inspector — if I could, I — er—”

Javert set his pen down and rolled his shoulders beneath his coat. These encounters were also inevitable; it remained only to see how long Dubois would take to get to the point, which would be, as always, that he had frittered or gambled away all his money and could he please have an advance on his salary, Inspector, just this once? to which Javert had always - would always - say no, until he learned to manage his wages better, which seemed less of a possibility every year. “Speak up,” he said eventually, as Dubois seemed likely to haw forever. “What is it?”

Twisting his hat — did he look a bit worse-off than usual? It was earlier in the month than he usually came begging, if Javert remembered correctly — Dubois shuffled into the room. His cheeks pinked slightly, and Javert frowned; usually he at least asked before taking it so hard. Had he said something differently in this life to make Dubois assume the answer would remain no, when he hadn’t had the sense to realize it in any other? He could think of nothing.

"Well," Dubois said, when he finally stood in front of Javert’s desk, looking as rumpled as if he had run across the town, which was absurd as he had been working in the station all afternoon, "well — Inspector — it’s just — er. You, er, you heard me talking about you yesterday—" and there he winced and glanced away, blush deepening.

"Yes," said Javert, leaning forwards in his chair. If this was not about money — if something _had_ changed, then —

"Well-would-you-like-to-eat-dinner-with-me-tonight-sir," Dubois said in such a frantic rush that Javert initially had trouble making it out. "I— I’ve got a bit saved up now, we could go somewhere nice, it’s just you work so hard, and a, a night out would do you good. Sir. I’ll work extra hard on the paperwork tomorrow. Please?"


	22. ghosts [Courfeyrac & Javert]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> truth or dare (??? what was I thinking here)

Courfeyrac had not thought to haunt a wineshop for purposes other than politics, and yet it seemed he had no choice; he had found, after some trial, that while he was not precisely bound to the place he had died, it became difficult to manage himself if he strayed too far; the world stretched thin and pale around the edges, and what little strength he had while attending the bloodstained floor — a puff of dust, a trace of dew on the mirror, as if someone had held his tongue too close to it — vanished entirely, leaving him no more than (he could not have pardoned this from any of his friends, but so far as he had seen he was entirely alone; they had passed on, or risen up, and in his new solitude was pressed to be be nine in one) a ghost of himself.

For he found himself, if not denied, unacknowledged; to Mme Houcheloup, his eddies in the dust were drafts, to Matelote his breath on the glass only a late spring chill; Gibelotte had not returned, and though her replacement was rather more rabbity, she mistook bloodstains for spilled wine and saw no ghosts; Marius came, and wept, and left.

"So he is not dead, after all," a voice said after he had gone; Courfeyrac, who had thought himself alone in the Corinthe, turned in surprise to see a dim shadow standing both straight and yet somehow hunched against the post in the back of the room.


	23. bodyswap [Javert & Carl]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bodyswap....

In many ways the situation was absolutely intolerable: first and most obviously, he had been rendered absolutely hideous; mangey beyond belief and all but skeletal with awkward gangling limbs and a great, disgusting snout — and furthermore he was regularly forced to regard his own perfect, handsome body, now flopping about with disgusting ineptitude, and be reminded of what he had had. To be half scent-blind and nearly deaf as well was injury on top of insult, and to be forced to _speak_ constantly, like some sort of well-trained hound, and to have no one at whom to direct his displeasure — it was insufferable; it was obscene.

And yet, Carl thought, entirely ignoring Javert’s angry, retributive wheezing behind him as he easily lifted package after juicy, dripping package of steak from his shopping bag, he was forced to admit it was not entirely without benefit.


	24. christmas ficlets [Javert/Valjean]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I forget what the prompts were

The house is full of light and youth; Valjean has long since taken to the shadows in the corner to catch his breath, to keep himself out of the way. Truthfully, he would have liked to have been gone long ago, but tonight the shelter of the corner is all he can allow himself: Cosette glances at both of them every time she flits through the room on her husband’s arm, a look that pins him where he sits as surely as, years before, it had filled his little house with warmth and his breadbox with white bread. She worries for him, though he wishes she would not; Marius has lost most of the shadow in his eyes as the night has dragged on and laughs more freely at the things she says to him, and she ought to be carefree and happy with him.

At the sound of laughter and a slight commotion in the doorway, Valjean looks up, drawn unwillingly out of the memory of quieter, happier years. One of the younger men, rosy with drink, is perched unsteadily on another’s shoulders, tacking up an enormous green wreath above the door; he slides down, bows ludicrously, and — to another round of merriment — plucks a berry from it, holds it on high, and showily pretends to kiss his erstwhile stepstool.

Beside him in their shared exile, Javert suddenly stills, sending prickles down the back of Valjean’s neck; it is the demeanor of a watchdog on alert, and the fears that have been only recently buried are not entirely forgotten. He glances over, wondering, but Javert is only watching the boys at their horseplay, his eyes gone distant and unreadable.

* * *

Javert has felt the sword hanging over his neck for weeks, a sort of slow dread growing with each day he walks free of the Seine, a darkness banished to the fractures of his mind by Valjean’s unnatural light. But unnatural is the wrong word — or at least, it is applied to the wrong man. It is Javert who is unnatural; it has always been. He has been thinking unceasingly of the two drunken idiots since they left Valjean’s son in law’s party; the cold, dark fiacre is full of the heat of the room, the scent of spiced brandy, the sight of two men beneath a wreath.

With his keen eye he could have picked them out again unerringly in a crowd; he could have described them so any idiot sergeant could identify their faces. He has not been thinking of their faces, he has been thinking only of the outlines of their bodies, of how the shorter one, after sliding down from the taller’s shoulders, had leaned up to mockingly play-kiss him beneath the mistletoe, of how the light had caught them briefly in silhouette, blotting out their features and leaving only the shadows of men. He has been thinking of Valjean, and he thinks, scowling into the darkness, he thinks he always has been, though until tonight he had not known it. It will not do. Whatever ails him, whether it is a punishment or a weakness, it is his own to bear and not Valjean’s.

The carriage stops before Valjean’s apartment; Valjean opens the door and steps out, then turns, lit by the fiacre’s lamp, and looks back.

"Val—" Javert says without meaning to, the syllable ripping free of him, just as Valjean says "You—"

There is a moment of awkward silence in which Javert curses himself roundly and silently for saying anything at all, and then another in which suddenly a vision descends on him, of Valjean turning and going back up the stairs to his cold and empty apartment and trying to drive out every memory of his daughter’s warmth, of spending this Christmas night alone. Of he, himself, returning and doing the same. He hears again the echo of mocking laughter; he steels himself against it and steps out into the snow, closing the door behind him.

Valjean blinks up at him.

"Well," says Javert. "Do you want me to wait in the street?"


	25. christmas ficlets [Valjean/Fauchelevent]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mistletoe

In his hurry to get inside — it was a blustery evening, and while it was not yet snowing, the wind was doing quite well enough on its own at knocking snow off tree limbs and rooftops — Fauchelevent nearly knocked his head off on a large green bush suspended in his own doorway. “Go—er, goodness,” he said, ducking around it and patting at his head to make sure his hat had survived the encounter. “What’s this, brother?”

Madeleine had been sitting in the dark, candles unlit, as usual, but the fire was high and warm in the hearth at least, casting some dim light through the room; when Fauchelevent came in he started up and came to the door, giving him a hand in unloading the carrying basket from his back. “I thought—” he said, then knelt to undo the bell at Fauchelevent’s knee and started over. “The tree by the melon bed had a bit of mistletoe; I thought seeing a bit of green inside would cheer Cosette tomorrow.”

So he’d been up that tree in the ice and snow, Fauchelevent translated with a click of his tongue, and patted Madeleine’s shoulder thankfully as he divested himself of scarf and gloves. “Well, I’m sure she’ll be happy to see it.” She was always happy with anything Madeleine did, sweet thing that she was, and quite able to recognize a saint when she saw one. “Ah—” he said suddenly, remembering the basket, and Madeleine surged to his feet to steady him as if he was about to fall. It was a kind thought, and so he used Madeleine’s arm to balance his old bones as he bent and lifted the lid from the basket, rummaging around the packages within until he found the length of red velvet ribbon he’d bought in the market. “I thought this would look nice in that pretty brown hair,” he said, “but why not put it in your, er, wreath, there, instead?”

Madeleine cupped Fauchelevent’s hand, holding the ribbon, in his own; his smile was a living thing, warmer than the fire; when he kissed Fauchelevent briefly, awkwardly on the cheek, Fauchelevent felt himself blushing like a boy. And, when he leaned up to tie the ribbon about the top of the mistletoe, Fauchelevent found himself looking at his friend wonderingly through a third set of eyes altogether: the tight stretch of Madeleine’s shirt across his broad shoulders, the firelight glimmering in his thick white hair, the deftness of his fingers as they worked the velvet—

"Ah, come, come," he said, grabbing up the basket before he could reach for anything else and limping hastily with it across to the table. "There’s more here yet; you’ll have to tell me if they’ll suit her."


	26. first kiss [Valjean/Favourite]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> first kiss over dessert

"Ah— You have—" Valjean said, gesturing helplessly at the tiny smear of cream that had caught on Mme Favourite’s lip and then touching his own in demonstration. The remains of his own profiterole were lying in twisted crumbs on his plate; he had not thought to eat any at all, rather to save them all for Cosette when she came back in from the garden. But she had insisted — _it is the job of a young lady to know where the best patisseries are, and the job of her papa to know the best of their stock_ — and he had not been able to refuse.

She raised her hand to her mouth, blushing prettily; Valjean, out of his depth rather completely, felt his own face warming. “I mean to say,” he said, and then faltered to a stop: behind the cover of her hand, he could just see the flick of her tongue across her lip that caught some but not all.

"Is that better, monsieur?" she said, looking up at him from beneath thick, dark lashes, in a way that was not exactly coy nor exactly challenging, but some unnerving mixture of both.

It wasn’t.

He knew, in some vague, distant way, what was happening; years ago, when he had been Madeleine, he had been aware that a few women of Montreuil had set their caps for him, as businessman or mayor. He had treated them as calmly and coolly as any other, as he had felt no differently towards them; he had let the gossips into his empty home to see what they might; and in the end, it had all faded to ash and blown away.

But now there was Cosette; there was Mme Favourite, who despite her history was honest, and forthright, and proud, so like Fantine had been, who brought sweets for Cosette, and showed her clothing styles and powders and dancing-methods and sewing-stitches and a hundred other small feminine things that Valjean had not, before, had the faintest idea of. There was a curious guarded softness within her that caught at his eye and mind, that reminded him of a Christmas day some years past in Montfermeil —

"I’m sorry," he said, and reached out, his hand shaking only slightly, to smooth his thumb across her mouth. Her breath was warm against his palm; moments and eternities later, her lips were soft against his and her fingers light and gentle in his hand.


End file.
